A personal blog from librarian who is progressive and pagan, discussing politics, current events, and books.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Fundamentalist Sources of American Irrationalism?

Gus diZerega writes A Pagan's Blog. He is a pagan but also a professor of political science. In this post, he is trying to answer the question of why American political discourse is devolving so rapidly and why it seems to be from one side of the spectrum. He ties it to a fundamentalist culture raised to value faith alone, and to distrust reason and even facts. Here's his central point:

"A entire culture trained to distrust reason and facts as even evil when applied to their deepest beliefs is a culture where we can truthfully wonder whether they are capable of democratic self government rather than mobocracy. I would argue they are not. The states they dominate are not like Iran because they exist within the American constitutional framework. They are nice people in many cases, but they are not very good citizens of a free society."